Jonathan M. Borwein Pure and Applied Mathematics

Internationally renowned mathematician who, with his brother Peter, calculated the value of pi to a new world record.

The Story

Borwein was born into a family of academicians. His father headed the math department at the University of Western Ontario and his mother, now associate dean of medicine at UWO, completed a PhD in anatomy. He and his two siblings all majored in mathematics. Borwein studied at Oxford as an Ontario Rhodes Scholar. He became Professor of Mathematics at Dalhousie in 1984 and since 1993 has been the Shrum Chair of Science at Simon Fraser University. He co-founded and now directs the Centre for Experimental and Constructive Mathematics at SFU, recognized internationally for its work using computers to explore mathematical analysis.

Jon Borwein, his brother Peter Borwein, and David Bailey of NASA co-wrote the 1989 paper presenting the Quartically Convergent Algorithm, or how to compute one billion digits of pi. This paper was awarded the 1993 Chauvenet (the Mathematical Association of America's principal prize for a paper) and Hasse prizes for expository writing.

Jonathan Borwein and his brother Peter co-edit the Canadian Mathematical Society/Springer-Verlag series of Books in Mathematics. Borwein is on the editorial board of several other mathematical journals including the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society. He is also the President of the Canadian Mathematical Society.

His present research focus is on advanced collaborative environments for mathematics.

question #563

I have an interest in algebraic manipulation of known physical/chemical laws & principles. I am trying to find out if anyone has every assembled a list of all known mathematical, physical, chemical laws and principles on a computer database and then run queries on those laws (to express them in alternate forms). Do you know if anyone has done this?